Wednesday, June 17, 2009

"I think for them to say that I was disoriented was an amazing, amazing slinging of mud... Frankly what they're saying, anybody who knows me and everybody who knows me and those people who've heard me on television, those people who've heard me on radio, know that this is the most incredible smear that has ever occurred to someone only because he's standing up to the most powerful machine on earth."

Last week, Dear Leader fired inspector general Gerald Walpin after he identified millions of dollars in AmeriCorps funds that were wasted or misspent. The man in charge of Americorps is a top Obama supporter and friend. Mayor Kevin Johnson used AmeriCorps grants to pay volunteers to engage in school-board political activities, run personal errands for Johnson and even wash his car.

Today Team Obama said Walpin was "confused" at a meeting and had to be fired!!

I promised I would give Obama credit when deserved. This is one of those instances. Regardless of your stance on same-sex marriage, most major corporations in the U.S. have extended employee benefits to cover domestic partners.

The Federal Government should be no exception and I congratulate Obama on this effort. Actions such as this to more to address the health care crisis in this country than the socialized medicine Obamacare plan being debated in Congress.

Statement from Rick Scott, chairman of Conservatives for Patients Rights:

"It is unfortunate - and unusual - that ABC is refusing to accept paid advertising that would present an alternative viewpoint for the White House health care event. Health care is an issue that touches every American and all potential pieces of legislation have carried a pricetag in excess of $1 trillion of taxpayers' money. The American people deserve a healthy, robust debate on this issue and ABC's decision - as of now - to exclude even paid advertisements that present an alternative view does a disservice to the public. Our organization is more than willing to purchase ad time on ABC to present an alternative viewpoint and our hope is that ABC will reconsider having such viewpoints be part of this crucial debate for the American people. We were surprised to hear that paid advertisements would not be accepted when we inquired and we would certainly be open to purchasing time if ABC would reconsider."

WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate sources say the latest cost estimates for health care legislation are around $1.6 trillion over 10 years. Two Senate staffers, one Democratic and one Republican, said Congressional Budget Office estimates put the cost of the Finance Committee version of the bill at around $1.6 trillion.

A third staffer, a Finance Committee Democratic aide, indicated committee members are working to lower the cost to less than $1 trillion over 10 years, a level preferred by the Obama administration.

The staffers spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of negotiations over the legislation.

Cost problems have slowed work on the sweeping legislation.

Pushing again to get the U.S. health care system overhauled, President Barack Obama is arguing that Americans must beware of 'fear tactics' that have killed such efforts in the past.

Why? Because it's a political power grab to create another entitlement that encourages people to rely on government for every facet of their lives, a.k.a. socialism/communism. This is a horrible idea. It has never worked anywhere it has been tried. Just ask the British or the Canadians.

Just as Rahmbo The Ballerina said never let a good crisis go to waste, Obama has used the economic crisis as the impetus for passing his radical nationalized health-care agenda.

It's our view, that the President is not terribly concerned with actually fixing the economy.

Instead, he will use smoke and mirrors to covertly pass a radical Socialist agenda, establish a vast power grab for voting supremacy, and attempt to implode America from within.

The Obama Budget contains a $634 Billion "down payment" on national health-care that will ultimately top $1 Trillion!

Sneaky Democrats on Capitol Hill quietly sneaked "stealth-care" into the $800 Billion CRAPulus Socialism Bill.And all of this crap to get health care that Europe has proven as a complete and utter failure.

Sen. Jim DeMint wrote a great op/ed in the Washington Examiner a few months ago on the dangers of national health care.

In Great Britain last year, a 24-year old woman named Katie Hilliard was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The disease has since spread to her lungs and lymph nodes. In October, she took time off from her course of chemo and radiation therapy to marry her fiancée because, in her words, “We didn’t know how ill I would get.”

The family of Claire Everett does know. She died in September, of the same disease, with her parents, husband, and two-year old son by her side. She was 23.

Both could have been diagnosed early and possibly saved by a routine screening test. But the British National Health Service does not allow women under the age of 25 to receive that test.

These kinds of stories are commonplace in nations with government-controlled health care, with good reason. As the miracle workers in the global medical research field develop treatments to keep us alive and healthy much longer than ever before, the costs of health care inevitably rise. Government health services looking to cut costs usually choose to ration coverage.

In Great Britain, Canada, Sweden, and elsewhere, government bureaucrats decide which patients may receive which treatments based on how beneficial the treatment will be – beneficial to the government, that is, not the patient.

The process by which government health departments decide who gets what is called “Comparative Effectiveness Research” (CER). And you might be surprised to know there was more than $1 billion allocated for CER in the so-called economic stimulus bill passed last month by Congress.

By comparison, this is how the Obamabots at MS NBC view the health care debate.

"I Don't Care How Much It Costs," adding "I think conservatives are selfish when it comes to health care."

Bloomberg has a preview on President Obama's speech plan to overhaul the nation's regulatory structure.

June 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration plans to restrict the Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending powers while endowing it with authority overseeing systemic risk, ushering in what may become the Fed’s biggest overhaul in decades.

President Barack Obama’s proposal on financial regulation, to be released in Washington today, would force the central bank to get written approval from the Treasury before it extends emergency funding, according to a copy of the document obtained Bloomberg News. Obama also calls for a study of the Fed’s governance structure, including how it regulates financial firms.

The move is part of a proposal that would alter almost every facet of federal rules for the industry, aiming to prevent the regulatory lapses and risk build-up that led to the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Much of the plan will require approval in Congress, where jurisdictional battles and ideological clashes may delay and alter the legislation. Obama aims to sign a bill by the end of the year.

“We have to have somebody who is responsible for seeing the risks of the system as a whole and not just individual institutions,” Obama said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg News, referring to making the Fed the systemic risk regulator. “The Fed is best positioned to do that.”

On Bloomberg this morning, House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) discussed the Administration's new financial regulations to be announced today.

As the tension continues to rise following the controversial election 'victory' of Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton and Greta Van Susteren examine the United States president's handling of the voting controversy and subsequent uprisings being witnessed in Iran.

No, sir. With all due respect to your office, Fox News is doing its job. The role of media and journalism is not to kiss you ass but report on the news. It is the fundamental job of "news organizations" and the American people in general to question our leaders.

You have officially confirmed that you are a communist fascist. What a joke. Journalism has officially died in this country. I give up.

In a move that puts a cloud over transparency, White House officials are blocking access to the lists of the names of visitors to the White House.

The practice, carried over from the Bush administration, argues the public does not need to know who comes calling at the Executive Mansion, even for policy purposes.

"We are deeply disappointed," said Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington spokeswoman Anne Weismann, whose group is suing to get the records.

"The president, who has committed his administration to transparency and accountability, now takes the position of the Bush administration that the public is not entitled to know who visits the White House. These are not the actions of a pro-transparency administration," she said.

CREW requested the records through the Freedom of Information Act. The U.S. Secret Service denied the request, citing the presidential communications privilege.

CREW was requesting a list with logs of executives from coal companies. MSNBC was also denied a FOIA request asking for a list of every visitor to the White House since Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.

CREW received a letter from the Secret Service saying it was unable to provide the records due to pending litigation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that CREW already filed.

The letter goes on to say, "It is the government's position that the vast majority, if not all, of the records that would have to be searched to determine whether any records responsive to your request exist are not agency records subject to FOIA."

For its part, the Obama administration says the policy is still under review.

"We are reviewing our policy on access to visitor logs and related litigation involving the previous administration to determine how we can ensure that policymaking in this administration happens in an open and transparent way," said White House Spokesman Ben LaBolt.

Groups like CREW argue it's of critical importance to know the names of White House visitors because those visitors could have a huge impact on all sorts of policy matters. Logs that were released in isolated cases in the past included records of visits by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who frequently visited the Bush White House, and those involved in "filegate" in the Clinton era, when FBI files of 900 Republicans were found in the White House.

In a special news conference yesterday, Government Motors announced its new concept car... The new GM ( Government Motors ) proudly introduces the 2010 " Obama "

This car runs on hot air and broken promises. It has three wheels that speed the vehicle through tight left turns. It comes complete with two Teleprompters, programmed to help the occupants talk their way out of any violations. The transparent canopy reveals the plastic smiles still on the faces of all the " happy " Democrat owners

Sarah Palin has accepted comedian David Letterman’s apology made during Monday night’s broadcast of “The Late Show” for crude jokes made about her and her teen daughters last week.

In a statement to FOXNews.com early Tuesday, the Alaska governor said, "Of course it's accepted on behalf of young women, like my daughters, who hope men who 'joke' about public displays of sexual exploitation of girls will soon evolve."

"Letterman certainly has the right to 'joke' about whatever he wants to, and thankfully we have the right to express our reaction," Palin said. "This is all thanks to our U.S. Military women and men putting their lives on the line for us to secure America's Right to Free Speech - in this case, may that right be used to promote equality and respect."

The apology came after David Letterman took his biggest step to put the furor surrounding his jokes about Gov. Sarah Palin's daughters behind him.

"I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future," Letterman told the studio audience.

Why? Because it's a political power grab to create another entitlement that encourages people to rely on government for every facet of their lives, a.k.a. socialism/communism. This is a horrible idea. It has never worked anywhere it has been tried. Just ask the British or the Canadians.

Just as Rahmbo The Ballerina said never let a good crisis go to waste, Obama has used the economic crisis as the impetus for passing his radical nationalized health-care agenda.

It's our view, that the President is not terribly concerned with actually fixing the economy.

Instead, he will use smoke and mirrors to covertly pass a radical Socialist agenda, establish a vast power grab for voting supremacy, and attempt to implode America from within.

The Obama Budget contains a $634 Billion "down payment" on national health-care that will ultimately top $1 Trillion!

Sneaky Democrats on Capitol Hill quietly sneaked "stealth-care" into the $800 Billion CRAPulus Socialism Bill.And all of this crap to get health care that Europe has proven as a complete and utter failure.

Sen. Jim DeMint wrote a great op/ed in the Washington Examiner a few months ago on the dangers of national health care.

In Great Britain last year, a 24-year old woman named Katie Hilliard was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The disease has since spread to her lungs and lymph nodes. In October, she took time off from her course of chemo and radiation therapy to marry her fiancée because, in her words, “We didn’t know how ill I would get.”

The family of Claire Everett does know. She died in September, of the same disease, with her parents, husband, and two-year old son by her side. She was 23.

Both could have been diagnosed early and possibly saved by a routine screening test. But the British National Health Service does not allow women under the age of 25 to receive that test.

These kinds of stories are commonplace in nations with government-controlled health care, with good reason. As the miracle workers in the global medical research field develop treatments to keep us alive and healthy much longer than ever before, the costs of health care inevitably rise. Government health services looking to cut costs usually choose to ration coverage.

In Great Britain, Canada, Sweden, and elsewhere, government bureaucrats decide which patients may receive which treatments based on how beneficial the treatment will be – beneficial to the government, that is, not the patient.

The process by which government health departments decide who gets what is called “Comparative Effectiveness Research” (CER). And you might be surprised to know there was more than $1 billion allocated for CER in the so-called economic stimulus bill passed last month by Congress.

By comparison, this is how the Obamabots at MS NBC view the health care debate.

"I Don't Care How Much It Costs," adding "I think conservatives are selfish when it comes to health care."

Until now, I was hoping that Washington veteran Leon Panetta would be a somewhat moderate voice of reason and pragmatism within the Obama Administration. This pretty much squashes that idea.

WASHINGTON, June 14 (Reuters) - CIA director Leon Panetta says it's almost as if former vice president Dick Cheney would like to see another attack on the United States to prove he is right in criticizing President Barack Obama for abandoning the "harsh interrogation" of terrorism suspects.

"I think he smells some blood in the water on the national security issue," Panetta said in an interview published in The New Yorker magazine's June 22 issue.

"It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point."

It's amazing how the Left views Cheney's difference of opinion; could it actually be possible that Cheney is truly concerned about protecting America?

Dick Cheney released a statement responded to CIA Director Leon Panetta's suggestion that the former vice president's criticism of Obama administration policies means Cheney is wishing for another attack.

"I hope my old friend Leon was misquoted. The important thing is whether the Obama administration will continue the policies that have kept us safe for the last eight years."

Panetta was quoted in a lengthy profile by Jane Mayer in this week's New Yorker.

Never before have we seen such a fued between two Presidential Administrations. Don't look for it to cease anytime soon.

In a much-anticipated foreign policy address Sunday night Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called for the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside Israel, but only if the Palestinians recognize Israel's nature as a Jewish state.

Netanyahu said that he embraced President Barack Obama's vision, adding, however, that the Holocaust was not the reason for the establishment of the Jewish state.

The prime minister said that the descendants of the Palestinian refugees must not be resettled within Israel borders and that Jerusalem must remain united. Israel, he said, would not build any new settlements or expropriate new land for existing settlements.

"Peace has always been our objective," Netanyahu began. "Our prophets always envisioned peace; we bless each other with Shalom; our prayers end in peace."

Government might bring America's love affair with the car to an untimely end. That from P.J. O'Rourke, Cato Institute Mencken research fellow - and author of the new book Driving Like Crazy - talked about classic cars, government regulation, GM and the forthcoming Obamamobile at the Cato Institute June 9th, 2009.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Netanyahu continues to strike a balance between the wishes of his voting block and the pressure from the Obama Administration.

From The AP:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed a Palestinian state beside Israel for the first time on Sunday, reversing himself under U.S. pressure but attaching conditions such as having no army that the Palestinians swiftly rejected.

VIENNA — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed a Palestinian state beside Israel for the first time on Sunday, reversing himself under U.S. pressure, but saying the Palestinians would have to lay down arms, a condition they swiftly rejected.

A week after President Obama's address to the Muslim world, Netanyahu said the Palestinian state would also have to recognize Israel as the Jewish state — essentially saying Palestinian refugees must give up the goal of returning to Israel.

With those conditions, he said, he could accept "a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state."

The West Bank-based Palestinian government dismissed the proposal.

"Netanyahu's speech closed the door to permanent status negotiations," senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said. "We ask the world not to be fooled by his use of the term Palestinian state because he qualified it. He declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, said refugees would not be negotiated and that settlements would remain."

Looks like they will be doomed then with hands-off, non-committal responses like this from Team Obama:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. would continue to monitor the situation closely.

"But we, like the rest of the world, are waiting and watching to see what the Iranian people decide," she said at a news conference in Niagara Falls, Ontario. "The United States has refrained from commenting on the election in Iran. We obviously hope that the outcome reflects the genuine will and desire of the Iranian people."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the Obama administration was "impressed by the vigorous debate and enthusiasm that this election generated, particularly among young Iranians."

Much depends on the meaning of “accepts,” though, doesn’t it? I’m sure we’ll get some patented Hopenchange drivel tomorrow about “grave concerns,” etc, but if Iran’s kids are expecting The One to walk away from nuke negotiations in protest of the coup, they’re kidding themselves. For one thing, that’s something Bush would do, and of course Bush was never, evah right. For another, if Obama walks away then he’s essentially betting all his chips on a full-blown counterrevolution to erupt and topple the regime. If it doesn’t, or if it’s put down a la Tiananmen Square, Khamenei et al. will be in no mood to forgive and forget. Which means it’s either war to take out Iran’s nuke infrastructure or learn to stop worrying and love the Iranian bomb. Israelis are learning already!

Ashley Tisdale is not only a patriotic American, she sure knows how to show a man a good time. During a non-U.S. TV appearance, along with what appear to be Spanish-speaking Muppets, the High School Musical vixen proved she's all growed-up, treating a Barack Obama impersonator to a personal lap dance.

As the host points out, it's a good thing she did this for Obama—and not Bill Clinton.

"The answer is we could. But the president of the United States, who made a big deal out of McCain's so-called increase in taxes. The McCain plan was a very good plan. But the president drove it into the ground and won the election. It looks like he's looking at similar to what McCain wanted to do." Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)